Suicide Survivors: Running Through the Pain

To the majority
of viewers who watched the Olympic Games coverage from Sydney,
Australia, Suzy Favor-Hamilton was simply the woman who fell in the
last 150 meters of the 1500-meter final. But for Suzy and other
suicide survivors, her fall resonated much more deeply than any
physical ailment.

In a sense, the fall was the culmination of Suzy’s attempt to cope
with her brother Dan Favor’s suicide on Sept. 9, 1999. The death
changed her life in ways she couldn’t understand until returning
home from Sydney.

“I was upset [when he died], but I was training for the Olympics so
my focus was still on the Olympics,” she said in a phone interview
from her home in New Glarus, Wisconsin. “In my head, I thought, I
have to keep training. My brother died. I have to do this. I can
run and do really well and honor him. I thought the better I did,
the more I could honor him and the better my family would feel.
Maybe I could make all the pain go away.”

She continued: “It’s silly thinking, but in my head, that’s how I
was dealing with his death. The running for me really blocked
everything out. I would go in my world and train, train, train.
That was my outlet.”

Suzy, 32, finished second in the 1500 at the U. S. Olympic Trials
and was considered a medal contender at Sydney. She made it through
the preliminary rounds into the finals, and even led going into the
final stretch. But in the last 150 meters, as other runners passed
her, she found herself on the ground. She managed to get up and
finish the race, not knowing what had happened or why. Later, she
would discover that she was severely dehydrated.

“This is the first week I realized I put all this pressure on
myself to win because I thought that was the only way I could honor
my brother,” she said, three weeks after that night in Sydney.
“That was so much for one person to carry on her shoulders. It’s a
good steppingstone to realize my brother wouldn’t have cared which
place I got in the Olympics.”

Dan was 37 when he jumped from a nine-story building in Wausau,
Wisconsin, where he had convinced a janitor to let him in and watch
the sun rise. Suzy had been training at the University of
Wisconsin, in Madison, when she called her husband Mark to chat,
only to find he had been called away from work. When she finally
reached Mark at home, he told her the news.

Her brother, the oldest of the four Favor children, had suffered
from manic depression the majority of his life. Five years
separated Suzy from her brother — Suzy is the youngest with sisters
Carrie and Chris in between — but she has fond memories of her
childhood with him. Dan liked to tease his youngest sister, but he
also allowed her to ride on his motorcycles with him.

“I always remember him being this daredevil; always taking me out
in the country and going really fast,” she said. “He had this great
adventure side to him. Just his need to be on the edge.”

But Suzy acknowledges there are some sad memories because of Dan’s
illness. There were shock treatments and a stream of doctors as her
parents sought to help their son. She also remembers his paranoia
and his childhood habit of opening and closing doors or continually
straightening things. He was put on medication 15 years ago.

“It’s hard on the family to see all this going on, especially at a
young age. In my own little world I tried to block everything out
and that was my way of not dealing with it. And running was such a
big part of my world that I could just go for a run and it would
take away everything,” she said.

Indeed, Suzy’s life revolved around running. She was a top prep
runner before leaving her hometown of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, for
the University of Wisconsin. After winning 11 Wisconsin state
titles as a high school runner, Suzy added nine NCAA championships
and 23 Big Ten titles to her resume. A three-time Olympian, she is
also a six-time U.S. national champion and only one of two American
women to run under 4:00 in the 1500-meter run (3:57.40 in
2000).

After going to college and then moving to California with her
husband, Suzy says she only saw her brother on holidays. They
talked on the phone when they could: They had their own lives,
making steady communication impossible.

Recently, however, when Suzy and Mark moved back to Wisconsin, she
began to draw closer to her oldest sibling. They shared a love of
art and dogs. They also e-mailed constantly.

“I feel like I was the closest to my brother the past few years,”
she said. “I saw him about a week before he died. My parents and I
went up to his house for a picnic. My last memory of my brother is
I gave him a big kiss on the cheek and told him I loved him.”

Dan’s medication caused him to gain about 40 pounds in the last
year. He had been very conscious about his appearance, so Suzy
knows he didn’t like the way he looked. “But right before he died,
he looked really good. He was biking ten miles a day,” she
recalled. “It didn’t surprise me [that he was in good shape]
because I knew he had it in him. I was thrilled for him. He was so
happy.”

But neither Suzy nor her family knew that Dan had stopped taking
his medication. Nor did they realize Dan was caught in a downward
spiral he couldn’t reverse. He would die by suicide a week later.
Suzy said she now knows that Dan must have felt strong enough to
cease taking his pills, But once Dan stopped, he had no concept of
the path he was on. Neither did she.

“I honestly didn’t understand his disease until after he died and I
did research to answer some questions in my mind,” she said. “It’s
been a real strong need for me to educate people about the signs.
There are real dramatic signs people will show when they are off
their medication and he was showing every one in the book. We just
didn’t know.”

Immediately following Dan’s suicide, Suzy said she was filled with
the “Whys?” all suicide survivors know so well. Although she has
immersed herself in research, she is also at the point where she
feels she can ask more questions about Dan’s death; questions she
didn’t think were appropriate to ask until now.

It was at the funeral, she said, that she knew her life had
changed. “I had this overwhelming feeling of compassion. It was
this gift my brother had given me. He was telling me to be
compassionate toward people. I wanted to hug everyone. I told
myself when I felt that at the funeral, I would never let it leave
me.”

And she’s found people, right down to the strangers sitting next to
her on airplanes, to listen to her story. She also credits her
family and Mark, her husband of nine years, for their help. “I’ve
had an overwhelming amount of support so I’ve kept talking,” she
said.

Then there’s the artwork. Suzy has a bachelor’s degree in graphic
art; Dan was an artist as well. Suzy had purchased a painting from
Dan two years ago, and she’s pleased that it’s in her
possession.

“After his death, I dove into my artwork and I couldn’t stop,” she
said. “Again, it was my way of dealing with it; I was doing
something he loved. Art has always brought me so much happiness, so
this was a connection to be close to him. He has just inspired
me.”

But, most importantly, Suzy has begun to learn the hard lesson all
suicide survivors must endure: to let grief run its course. “After
the [Olympics] race, I was so upset,” she admitted, having thought
she could change the world with a win that would have honored her
brother. But through talking with her husband, she began to see
what she could realistically do. “I realize now I can make a
difference. Maybe it will affect some people. And that’s what is
really important.”

She has plans to work with a sports psychologist about issues
concerning her running and Dan’s suicide. But now that she’s able
to see how she was hurting herself, she feels she’s ready to move
on.

“I didn’t want to let it out for some reason but since I did, I
feel so much better now,” she said. “For me, it’s been little
steps. And maybe in two months I’ll realize something else and a
couple of months later I’ll realize something else.”